This has been discussed before, so check earlier posts. In Australia (and I presume everywhere else) you can buy iron chelate based snail pellets. These are quite plant safe, as they break down into iron oxides eventually, an whilst in chelated form are available for plant uptake. They are approved for organic gardening, so they're about as soft as you're going to get. Consider putting a plastic bottle top with a few of these pellets in your terrarium. Also see my earlier post about caffeine. Finally, you can put a deep bowl of beer in the ground out of sight - the snails love it and drink themselves to death.

And plus it may just be that there is only one snail. Maybe you got lucky on that? The other day i was looking at my orchids and noticed something strange on my NOID catt. w/ three buds. This plant was in a heap of $5 plants at a once a year sale at the most expensive nursery in the state. I have no idea what it looks like in flower. It grew one strong new growth since I got it and lo' and behold...three big fat buds! So then I'm looking at them and notice something strange on the middle one. A SNAIL!!!

A big fat brown snail that was a solid quarter inch. It had obviously been down in the media from outside and before i spotted it, it had eaten half my middle bud. :( I hope it enjoyed its 'last meal'...though it didn't get a chance to digest it. Anyway, I've been super vigilent since then and haven't seen anymore. I'm sure you can do the same and you'll be able to spot any others before they chow. Next time drop the bugger into your nep. pitcher! Sweet justice!

p.s. I know you probably don't have much extra time but just about every night we have an 'orchid chat' that often degenerates into a free for all chat...but its fun. Some cool people including even a Canadian or two! You should check it out some time. orchidsnetDOTorg ...you can just sign in as a guest. See you there?

good luck w/ the snails.

Yeah, I'm REAAAAALLLLYYYYY hoping it was just one snail that somehow hitched a ride in on something recently. Perhaps some wild-collected moss. . . even though I was so careful! I didn't want to drop it into the nep. because I was worried that I would miss and it would fall into the ground and I'd never find it back! Plus the pitcher is getting old, so who knows if it would have died before killing the snail! Still haven't remembered to check at night for more snails though. And yeah, I know about the chats at orchidsnet. I'm not really a chatting person. I prefer the forums. Thanks for the invite though!

Well, I searched last night, and not a snail to be found! Hopefully that one snail didn't lay any eggs. . .

Same thing happened to me a while back. I ended up finding 2 bush snails(the little flat translucent suckers-AKA the "bad" snails), I killed one and lost the other in my dendrobium roots. I think it will be fine though, as I've never seen him again(months later), and the dendrobium is growing a spike AND a new cane at the same time.

They can be flukes(like mine hopefully was). Like Nathan suggested, you can use the safer products for snails that come in the form of iron pellets. They are plants, animal and children safe, should be a pale white color and you can spread a little around the substrate of your tank.

Sam

Well, I'm doomed. I found three more snails on my nep. pitchers today. =( They must really like the pitchers, because I can't find them anywhere else! Killed them. One was actually in the pitcher, already being digested. =) Did you know that the liquid in the pitchers is red or pink? I dumped some out. Pretty cool! I wonder if it's the blood of the insects! =) But, it means I have lots more snails. . . =( Will be setting out some beer traps and looking for those organic snail-killing pellets.

It sounds like a little brown moss snail, if you have moss in your terrarium. They can come in from other plants as well such as ferns. I have them in all of my terrariums and apparently they came from Oregon moss I collected. Also a little spiral snail from a greenhouse plant.... I find they find equilibrium and as well small earthworms and other soil organisms are allowed to live. When I have moss growing well they tend to stay there, or under wood. If there is a particular plant they like, I put it in a small saucer of shallow water, with the plant in the middle above the water - the moat will not allow the snail to get to the plant. I take it out in the morning - they usually live under water for awhile. As you can tell, I like my little snails as they add life and function to the environment, eating debree , adding compost to the soils. Once I fed them lettuce to persuade them not to eat the one fern they liked too much (a delicate one) and they bred too fast, so I let them go back to a more natural growth/die off. Algae on the wall sides from moisture also is food for them.
Again, to keep them off of other plants, moss and wood (they go to the underside) make them happy. Most of my plants are used just to skim the light coating of algae that forms on them by the snails and it is only ONE very delicate type that they eat to shreds. If you don't see any actual damage why not wait and see if they fit in. In the largest 75 gallon tank I have a back wall of hypertufa, moss, vines, ferns growing out of it, and I know the snails are there as I've seen the little trails left on the glass when the moisture is there early am, but I rarely spot them and not a single plant with chew problems. In a smaller bowl terrarium I have a rock with Oxallis (sp) and sometimes they nibble but it growns so fast it needs the pruning.

Best Sherry

Thanks, Sherry! That does give me hope. I also have not noticed any damage on any of my plants, so I'm thinking that they aren't so bad, and I actually haven't seen one for a while. They are cute, but if they start nibbling orchids. . . they're going to be exterminated! So far so good though. Not even my ferns show any damage.

I've had a running battle with little snails in my vivarium, and the ones that I have most certainly do cause damage to some orchids. Though they are tiny, they can eat an entire root tip off in one feeding. I've been using Sluggo to keep their populations low, and with sluggo always present, there is no longer any noticeable damage, though the snails are still around in low numbers. I'm afraid to use caffeine, because some of the more sensitive pleurothallids, especially Lepanthes, don't react well to it. If you start to notice roots gnawed off or other mysterious damage to your plants, Sluggo will help immediately, but it probably won't wipe them all out, ever.

Get diatomaceous earth. It is very fine and powdery, so don't inhale any. You can sprinkle it around the base of your terrerium. If it gets wet, you won't see it, but it still works by drying up/cutting the snail when it crawls over it.

It is very spiny & pointy so it kills mechanically instead of chemically. I use it as a de-wormer for my animals.
Make sure you get the gardening kind, not the kind for swimming pool filters

Sterling

Here is a link that might be useful: look here

Thanks, sterling, but I can't use it. This will eventually be a tank for poison dart frogs, and if there is any diatomaceous earth lying around, they could cut themselves, too. I need as non-toxic and harmless a solution as possible. Still haven't gotten around to it yet (lack of funds), but I will be setting out beer traps soon. I found another snail yesterday, this one a different kind, one of those terrible pond snails, so I REALLY hope it didn't have a chance to reproduce before I killed it! If those don't work well enough, I'll have to get those snail-killing iron pellets. A little extra iron won't hurt my plants at all, and it should be all gone by the time I get frogs, so I should be okay with that. . .

Eukaryote: didn't even think of them eating the roots! Now I am concerned. . .

I feel for ya sahoy. I've been eliminating snails on sight for several months now. Some have been incredibly tiny but one 'large' fellow was about 1 cm in diameter. That one chewed some holes in my Macodes. I don't trust the pillbugs either. They will at times nibble on tender plant tissue as well.

Well, I noticed some damage to my polka-dot plant, so I figured I better do something already! Sunk a bowl into one of the few bare spots in the substrate this evening and put some liquer in it. We don't have any beer, okay?!? =) Don't worry, it's totally tasteless liqeur, and we got it for free, so there's no big loss. In case anyone wants to know, it's Godiva White Chocolate liquer. Doesn't taste like white chocolate at all! And if you look at the ingredients, you see why. Nothing more than cream, sugar, and alcohol. No flavours at all. So it's not worth buying! consider yourselves forwarned. =) I hope the snails like it though. =)

Unfortunately, I think your liquer won't work. I think the snails are after the smell of yeast, not the alcohol (indeed I don't think they understand alcohol). You're going to have to find some beer, or maybe add some vegemite to the mix ;)

I agree! It didn't work at all. Must be the yeast. What if I put some actual yeast in some water with some sugar so that it gives off it's smell to attract the snails? Vegemite is nasty! =P

You could try marmite :)

Just get some beer, it's a known recipe. (If you're looking for a particularly undrinkable beer, try XXXX or Fosters - wouldn't want to waste it)

Marmite is gross too! And it probably costs more than a can of beer! We don't have XXXX here, and Foster's is hard to find, but my husband says I should use VB, because that's all it's good for. =) (He lived in Oz for a few years in high school).

you can indeed use a mix of yeast + water + sugar. As I recall, last time I used such a mix, I did add alcohol to the mix as well hoping the little slime balls would get drunk/die of alcohol poisoning. The snails were quite accomodating if I'm remembering correctly.

Hey Nathan, I hope you're not offended. My husband said 'Watch, he'll be from Victoria!' and I said 'Oh he is!". All this after I posted the message, of course! I didn't know what VB stood for. Of course, being an aussie, you should be able to take some teasing. =) ; ) Ah, all in good humour. I ended up getting Coors light. Personally I didn't care which brand I used, because I don't drink beer (nasty stuff!). I don't think I've caught a single snail though! Perhaps I had fewer than I thought. Except that I've seen baby snails on the glass. Why aren't they going for it?!? Stupid snails. . .

I don't care for VB, we have so many other nice beers to drink that I only drink when it's the only choice (and only then if I'm thirsty :). I'm surprised you could find beer up in Canada, figuring all you would have was budwater or something.

I can only assume that your snails also have better taste... :)

I take it you've never heard of Molson Canadian, the most popular beer up here? Probably only because it has 'Canadian' in the name though. =) My husband doesn't like it. He prefers microbrewery beers, like Kokanee, made in the Okanagan (BC, west coast). I have to admit that I do take the occassional sip of Kokanee, because it's nice and refreshing, not very bitter at all. I'm more of a liquer gal though. =) That's right, wine taste on a beer budget. Or champagne taste on a milk budget, whatever. . . =) My favourites are Grand Marnier and Amaretto. Baileys is also pretty good.

I just posted a bush snail problem in the orchid forum. I tryed the dunking method. I just submerged the pots completely for a hour and some. A ton of snails make there way out of the water climbing up anything.. where you can tweeze them off... i got a lot off this way. I will do it again in a week and some to get any more...

Yeah, but everything in my terrarium is planted directly in the substrate, so I'd basically have to dismantle everything and start over. I think I'll just live with the problem! They don't appear to be damaging anything.

Well, so far I've caught two snails. . . whopeeeeeeeeeee. . . =P I give up.

If you are just going to catch-um-as-you-see-um method. Cut up some potato or apple slices and place them in your set-up... then at night when they come about they should collect at the food and you can tweeze them from there...

Mine seem to come out during the day more than at night. I'm just leaving them be now. It looks like they only eat dead plant material, so that's just fine, as long as I don't get a sudden population explosion. . .

It's just a harmless snail why would you kill it instantly. Just put it outside itll get eaten by a bird or a reptile where it's actually of use to the ecosystem instead of just killing a harmless snail. Plus if your finding random snails that you never put in your terrarium your not a good terrarium owner and should really rethink your life goals